The Spot Blog

WASHINGTON — In an effort to chop more than $100 billion from the federal budget, Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn says he doesn't want to touch a dollar of defense spending and instead wants to look at programs such as food stamps.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Jefferson County, is tired of Republicans picking on entitlements such as Medicare. He instead favors a broader discussion about domestic spending cuts and revenues. "You can't cut your way out of our fiscal crisis," he says.

Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, believes the $55 billion set to be lopped from the military's budget is a sound idea — as long as it's done thoughtfully. He will work for the next eight weeks to find a way to do that.

The first round of fights in the new, 113th Congress — sworn in Thursday — is taking shape as both sides begin to work on the pending automatic $109 billion slated to be cut from the federal budget in about eight weeks.

Colorado's congressional delegation, both Republicans and Democrats, might not agree on the specifics of pending cuts, but they all believe the federal government needs to go on a spending diet.

They also, mostly, believe $109 billion is a good place to start.

Congress in 2011 approved the sequester, which bluntly cuts roughly $55 billion out of the defense budget and another $55 billion out of domestic spending in 2013. It was supposed to be a "worst of all worlds" to Republicans and Democrats — in hopes of forcing them to come up with a better alternative to trim $1.2 billion out of federal spending over 10 years.

Advertisement

They didn't.

The sequester was supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, but the "fiscal cliff" package — approved in a series of votes early New Year's Day — punted sequester cuts to the end of February, giving Congress time to figure out a better way to find that money.

"We need to be able to move the sequester forward," said Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder. "I agree with hitting those levels of cuts, for sure, and if Congress can agree with a better way of doing it, we should. My thought is, when you make cutbacks in a company, you may find a bad program and cut there instead of across the board."

He declined to say specifically where he would make changes to the sequester, only that he welcomed a conversation about it.

Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, didn't lay out specifics either. He said he was disgusted with the sequester's postponement, saying it was like "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

"We've already agreed to this," he said. "We've actually got to do far more. If you can find a way to replace it with somewhere else in cuts, that's fine, but we have to do it."

Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat who said he voted against the fiscal-cliff measure because it didn't have meaningful deficit reduction, said he wants to see the sequester replaced with tax reform that brings in more revenue and government cuts in spending.

"Unless it's replaced by something of the same size, I think it should stand," he said. "What I'm looking for here is a number that will satisfy the bigger issue of putting the country on a sustainable path."

Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, said he wanted to go line by line through the budget to try to find efficiencies, although he wouldn't be specific on where he wanted to trim first.

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Perlmutter said they were committed to deficit reduction, but neither would commit to a number for this year. They said they wanted to look at defense spending, among other places, for possible cuts.

"I'm not going to comment on any particular number because I think we need to have some real conversations with flexibility," said DeGette.

She said the recent deal to avert the fiscal cliff was a positive example of Republicans and Democrats working together.

All of Colorado's Democrats voted for the deal except Bennet. None of the Republicans voted yes.

The sequester deadline collides with another big vote Congress must take at the end of February: on increasing the debt ceiling. Most Republicans say they want to have some promise that spending will go down before voting yes on raising the debt ceiling — even though the ceiling is technically money already spent and obligations already made.

"It's all going to hit at the same point," Gardner said. "Leadership has to be there. These conversations have to begin; they can't be flash in the pans, go on TV for 30 seconds and say it. This place has gotta roll up its sleeves on behalf of the American people and start working."